2017-02-17 Boskone 54 - Boston, MA

[Toaster Retribution]

22 hours ago, Pagerunner said:

Bring a box of fish sticks and ask him to sign it. I hear he loves fish sticks.

If this is true, he might like pizza with fish sticks. Its very good actually.

[Ironeyes]

Question: What qualities would attract an inkspren?

Answer: Inkspren don't like how variable humans are, it's a thing out of Honor, so a person who is willing to think about their life rather than reacting by instinct would work for them. The scholar is the perfect example but for instance a soldier who is very thoughtful and doesn't just rush into battle would work for them too.

[Pagerunner]

36 minutes ago, Chull #445 said:

If this is true, he might like pizza with fish sticks. Its very good actually.

You should definitely give him a slice if you get the chance.

[DAdam]

There were a couple people video recording the Building a Career panel, so hopefully it will end up online somewhere.

[Ironeyes]

32 minutes ago, DAdam said:

There were a couple people video recording the Building a Career panel, so hopefully it will end up online somewhere.

@ccstat and I got separate recordings. I'll upload mine asap (which is code for Monday)

[ccstat]

Boskone Day 2 Preliminary Report

Not a ton of questions answered, but a few juicy ones. Perhaps the biggest: VOIDBINDING CHART IS CONFIRMED! As he answered another question, Brandon mentioned in passing that yes, the rear endsheet of WoK is about voidbinding. That has been RAFO'd and argued a bunch over the past several years, so I was shocked to hear him share that info. (at ~46 min in the Rithmatist Q&A)

In general, Brandon tended to expound on his answers this time around, rather than going for the short Yes/No/RAFO.

The events of the day:

• A demo of Mistborn: House War, which @DAdam got to play. He can give a report on that. Brandon arrived near the end and gave us about 20 minutes of impromptu Q&A.
• A panel with Joshua Bilmes (agent), Moshe Feder (editor), Michael Whelan (artist), and Emily Sanderson (wife) talking about the making of his career. It was fun to hear their stories of how they met each other, and hear them compliment (and poke fun at) one another. No book related questions.
• Rithmatist Q&A. Fans met to discuss the book, and Brandon joined us part way through to answer questions. Tons of background info on the world, magic, and writing process of the Rithmatist. After the allotted time, he moved out into the hall and transitioned into a general Q&A.

(Unrelated to Brandon: I also got to have a great conversation with Max Gladstone, and later with Jane Yolen, both of whom were super awesome.)

These recordings are available for you to listen or transcribe: (links will take you to Google Drive)

1. Friday Signing Line (2 h 18 min, 260 MB)
2. House War Q&A (22 min, 42 MB)
3. Rithmatist Q&A (55 min, 103 MB)
4. Career Panel (56 min, 105 MB) Note: no book-related questions

Questions I asked (paraphrased):

Q. Could a Soother prevent a listener from attuning a given rhythm?
A. No. A coppercloud could, but I hadn't thought about emotional allomancy interacting. See, the rhythm isn't your emotion and doesn't determine your mood. It is a direct connection to the spiritual realm. So I guess soothing could make it harder just like it makes anything harder, in the same way that driving a car would be harder. It is possible that a coppercloud could play with it. Not a normal power of a coppercloud, but you've seen them do stuff similar.

Q. From the Great Circle in Nebrask we know that defenses can be scaled up immensely. Could you also scale up and make a Godzilla sized chalkling?
A. This is theoretically possible.

Q. If you draw a line of Forbiddance on a chalkboard on the ground and hit the line, will the chalkboard move?
A. (heavily paraphrased) No. I get asked this a lot. Rithmatist started out in the Cosmere, so many of the Cosmere rules of perception apply. If you try to draw a line of Forbiddance on something that doesn't cognitively seem stable enough to provide support, the magic won't take. Once the line is in place, moving it is extremely difficult. If you did manage to move the line or the thing it was drawn on, the magic would dissolve. Unless the canon versions of books 2 & 3 contradict this, assume that the same rules apply to Rithmatic lines as to speed bubbles.

Other important Rithmatist tidbits: Book 3 is to be called The Nebraskan. The Rithmatist was originally set in the cosmere and was designed to showcase some spiritual realm entities (including both the shadowblaze and the forgotten), to demonstrate how they work. They are different from cognitive entities in important ways, including that they find linear time (and any sort of structure, really) to be a foreign concept.

[Ironeyes]

Great cosmere tidbits from the Rithmatist discussion, as well as some insight into the nature of the Shadowblazes (finally confirmed the name too) and charcoal creatures. I should have time to upload my copy (with video!) on Monday, and I'll get a recording of the signing tomorrow as well. Great to meet you in person too!

If anyone wants to find me tomorrow, I'll be in a grey suit with a bright green tie. 

Edited February 19, 2017 by Ironeyes

[Landis963]

13 hours ago, ccstat said:

Other important Rithmatist tidbits: Book 3 is to be called The Nebraskan. The Rithmatist was originally set in the cosmere and was designed to showcase some spiritual realm entities (including both the shadowblaze and the forgotten), to demonstrate how they work. They are different from cognitive entities in important ways, including that they find linear time (and any sort of structure, really) to be a foreign concept.

I wonder whether and how the concept of "spiritual realm entities" will become relevant to the rest of the Cosmere.

[yulerule]

I asked two things about parshmen and Parshendi today. So, I asked if a Parshendi takes a parshmen by the hand, leads him out into a highstorm with a gemstone that has a spren trapped in it, will the parshmen transform. 

Brandon said, yes, now they will, but before not. So basically now that the Everstorm is here, they can be transformed, but before they couldn't. 

 

 

Also I asked about the new Rythyms, as I found it suspicious that the Listeners didn't have "bad" emotions. Brandon said that the Listeners did have ridicule, and so on, but before they would say it to the Rythyms of amusement.

 

So bad emotions were there but not the Rythyms.

[Bromo_Sapien]

On Friday, I asked (paraphrasing) what happened to a person's Physical self when they traveled into the Cognitive Realm. He replied that it depended on how they did it: Elsecalling and worldhopping via Shardpools vs Soulcasting. When Jasnah or Hoid are Elsecalling / Shardpooling, their Physical Self goes into the Cognitive Realm with them. He described Soulcasting more like astral projection: the body is still in the Physical Realm but the mind peers into the Cog Realm.

 

I then asked for clarification on the Elsecalling / Shardpooling part, specifically that the Physical Self was actually in the Cog Realm so there are two "levels" of self there (paraphrasing) as opposed to someone like Kelsier who only had two "levels" of self and he said yes, that's right.

 

One last thing: In my personalized book, he wrote " 'Are you listening?' " (he put quotes around it in the book). I'm not exactly sure when he wrote it during his answer so I'd be interested in listening to the audio recording to see if there's something I missed. I got the front of the line late, around 6 o'clock, I believe.

[Pagerunner]

1 minute ago, Bromo_Sapien said:

One last thing: In my personalized book, he wrote " 'Are you listening?' " (he put quotes around it in the book). I'm not exactly sure when he wrote it during his answer so I'd be interested in listening to the audio recording to see if there's something I missed. I got the front of the line late, around 6 o'clock, I believe.

It's from Edgedancer, he's been signing everyone's copies of AU with it.

[Ironeyes]

This is what I remember from my questions at the signing. Really can't wait to get the exact words, since I got some great answers.

Harmonium's instability IS caused by some of the subatomic particles being of Ruin and some of Preservation.

Harmonium is NOT an alloy, but rather a complete metal. Its particles are NOT composed of investiture, but have a "spiritual identity" that associates them with one of the shards. A portion of the energy that comprises the explosion when harmonium touches water is energy being pulled directly from the spiritual realm and the particles thus losing their spiritual association with one of the shards. Due to this, there is no such thing as Harmonium Oxide, although he did add a cryptic comment that there is "something else" left behind after the explosion which is "interesting" and will be important to Scadrial's future. 

At this point I figured I couldn't hold up the line much longer and started fishing for a RAFO card. So I asked about Harmonium's nuclear potential. But get this: He didn't RAFO it!! He said that harmonium can't actually create a nuclear explosion but it does something analogous which will be "very important" to the cosmere in the future. He explained that this is because he essentially added a third state of matter, since investiture is analogous to energy and matter where one can be transformed into the others through the right processes. So harmonium can create an effect that is somehow similar to a nuclear explosion but instead of transforming matter into energy, it does something with investiture. He didn't elaborate after that. 

[yulerule]

Hmm, interesting.

Me theorising:

We've known for a long time that the cosmere has matter, energy, and investiture. I've never thought about nuclear explosions before thought. So we all know when matter becomes energy, there's a lot of it. Investiture can become matter: spren--> shardblades, god metals, etc. I think we can also claim that investiture becomes energy, a person can run on Storm light long after they would be exhausted normally. I can't think of the opposite though, regular matter becoming investiture. 

[MPHRD]

 

1 hour ago, Ironeyes said:

he did add a cryptic comment that there is "something else" left behind after the explosion which is "interesting" and will be important to Scadrial's future. 

Atium?

[Argent]

4 hours ago, Bromo_Sapien said:

I then asked for clarification on the Elsecalling / Shardpooling part, specifically that the Physical Self was actually in the Cog Realm so there are two "levels" of self there (paraphrasing) as opposed to someone like Kelsier who only had two "levels" of self and he said yes, that's right.

Can you elaborate on that a little bit? I think I know what you are saying, but I want to try to minimize the chance of us getting the wrong info.

On the harmonium... I think I need to sit on the new information for a little bit.

[Windrunner]

1 hour ago, yulerule said:

Hmm, interesting.

Me theorising:

We've known for a long time that the cosmere has matter, energy, and investiture. I've never thought about nuclear explosions before thought. So we all know when matter becomes energy, there's a lot of it. Investiture can become matter: spren--> shardblades, god metals, etc. I think we can also claim that investiture becomes energy, a person can run on Storm light long after they would be exhausted normally. I can't think of the opposite though, regular matter becoming investiture. 

Small Words of Radiance spoiler

Spoiler

Lift can convert food straight into Stormlight, so I'd say that is one example of regular matter becoming investiture.

 

[ccstat]

I've started a google doc for transcribing the Rithmatist Q&A audio. At the moment it has timestamps for all of the questions, and paraphrased answers, but nothing is verbatim yet. Help would be appreciated. (Audio files are linked in this post above)

The first 20 minutes are fairly quiet, since I was sitting partway back in the room. If those portions are too difficult for you to hear, @Ironeyes's recording may be better as he was in the front row.

[skaa]

On 2/19/2017 at 0:29 PM, ccstat said:

Q. Could a Soother prevent a listener from attuning a given rhythm?
A. No. A coppercloud could, but I hadn't thought about emotional allomancy interacting. See, the rhythm isn't your emotion and doesn't determine your mood. It is a direct connection to the spiritual realm. So I guess soothing could make it harder just like it makes anything harder, in the same way that driving a car would be harder. It is possible that a coppercloud could play with it. Not a normal power of a coppercloud, but you've seen them do stuff similar.

That reminds me of one of the questions I've been meaning to ask Brandon: Can Copperclouds block Leechers? From his answer here, it seems Copperclouds can be made to prevent Spiritual connections, so perhaps Copper Allomancy can be used to block Chromium Allomancy.

As for @Ironeyes' report, I was one of the people who recently speculated that harmonium is fissile. As usual, Brandon comes up with an even cooler idea. Using harmonium to generate tons of Investiture would be awesome for space-faring Scadrians.

Edited February 20, 2017 by skaa

[Yata]

My first thoughts to the "leftover after a Ettmetal's explosion" is Atium/Lerasium/an alloy of Atium or Lerasium/Alluminium (the last one for a Theory of mine about the Spiritual Emptyness) but:
The Lerasium can't be the outcome, the Southern will have a plenty of mistborn in this case, and with the probably unbalance in Ruin/Preservation investiture is unlikely

The Atium is actually the main candidate from my list, It's quite useless in the Era 2 so its revelation doesn't change the society too much, much more for the unbalance it's more likely that Ruin's Influence remain in the metal.

Atium/lerasium alloy: If one of the Spiritual associations to a Shard is removed. You will stay with the other godmetal+whatever remain of the drained part

Alluminium: Again this is for my Theory of the Spiritual Emptiness, but it's unlikely. If the Ettmetal lose only one of its Spiritual Associations, the result can't be a pure neutral metal

Edited February 20, 2017 by Yata

[Jofwu]

On 2/18/2017 at 11:50 AM, Ironeyes said:

Inkspren don't like how variable humans are, it's a thing out of Honor

I'm not sure how to interpret this. What's the "thing out of Honor"?

The Inkspren get this dislike from Honor? Human variability is a think of Honor?

[Yata]

6 minutes ago, jofwu said:

I'm not sure how to interpret this. What's the "thing out of Honor"?

The Inkspren get this dislike from Honor? Human variability is a think of Honor?

The Human variability is the "thing out of Honor"... The Inkspren don't like it because it's out of Honor

[Pagerunner]

16 minutes ago, jofwu said:

I'm not sure how to interpret this. What's the "thing out of Honor"?

The Inkspren get this dislike from Honor? Human variability is a think of Honor?

9 minutes ago, Yata said:

The Human variability is the "thing out of Honor"... The Inkspren don't like it because it's out of Honor

Huh, I interpreted it the other way entirely. "Out of Honor" means "from Honor," not "in opposition to Honor." The Inkspren reflect a portion of Honor's Intent, which is in agreement with scholars and soldiers who are careful and think before they do anything. I tie my interpretation of Honor's overall Intent to dependability, to keeping promises and oaths. And planning ahead is essential, so you don't promise something you can't deliver.

 

[Jofwu]

6 hours ago, Yata said:

The Lerasium can't be the outcome, the Southern will have a plenty of mistborn in this case, and with the probably unbalance in Ruin/Preservation investiture is unlikely

I disagree. I expect the products of a Harmonium+water reaction aren't going to take the form of nice, bite-sized beads. It's probably more residue than anything else. Unless they stopped to perform a careful chemical analysis, I doubt they'd realize there's anything strange about the product. And even then you'd have to find some way to scrape enough of it together to do something useful with it. Probably not doable with their technology.

My biggest reason for doubting Lerasium is the meta problem of how many Mistborns we'd have if people figured this out.

7 minutes ago, Yata said:

The Human variability is the "thing out of Honor"... The Inkspren don't like it because it's out of Honor

Still confused here, sorry. Variability is of Honor... and Inkspren don't like it because they're more Cultivation? Or are you saying "out of Honor" means "not very Honor-like"?

[Yata]

2 minutes ago, jofwu said:

Still confused here, sorry. Variability is of Honor... and Inkspren don't like it because they're more Cultivation? Or are you saying "out of Honor" means "not very Honor-like"?

Probably I explained my point poorly.
"Variability" isn't something of honor and the Inkspren didn't like it. I read "out of Honor" like "not part of Honor/not a thing of Honor".

Returning to the Lerasium, probably Ettmetal will produce halfish of his mass as Lerasium (if the outcome is lerasium), it's more than enough to create a popolation full of Allomancer...and I honestly doubt people who base their survival on the metallic arts didn't figure how to use it (notice the Southern are skilled enough to mine cadmius and Chromium...they are probably more technological advanced then the Northern

[Pagerunner]

About the residue. The harmonium reaction with water doesn't cause nuclear fission - it's entirely chemical in nature, and there's also a release of Investiture tied to subatomic particles that produces energy and makes the reaction more violent. Lerasium and atium aren't alkali metals, so there would need to be a nuclear reaction occurring to produce them from Harmonium.

If it is just the electrons that are Invested (the nucleus itself might be too unstable if protons and neutrons had additional repulsion), then the transfer of an Invested electron from a harmonium atom to a hydrogen ion is probably the place to begin our search. The Investiture structure (not the atom itself) of harmonium could be destabilized, since it doesn't match an allowed configuration (harmonium, atium, or lerasium), and all that Investiture is released as energy, leaving behind a regular cesium ion. But, when we look at the electron that was transferred, it will be sitting there all alone as a Hydrogen radical. Let's assume that's an allowable Investiture structure. These radicals can interact with everything else in the reaction environment - cesium ions, water, hydroxide ions, you name it, and in most cases the resulting molecule wouldn't be legal for being Invested, and the additional energy of this final electron would be released through Investiture decay. But, when two radicals interact with one another, they would form a hydrogen molecule, H2, with two Invested electrons. If that's a legal conformation, then there would be small amounts produced in every reaction. (It wouldn't be every molecule of hydrogen produced in this reaction, it all depends on the specific reaction pathway that is used to produce H2. Radicals are extremely reactive, so most of them will probably interact with a water molecule before they encounter another radical.)

So, from a chemistry point of view, putting cesium in water will get you cesium hydroxide and hydrogen gas. Nothing else is possible without a nuclear reaction. If the hydroxide isn't Invested, that only leaves the gas. If harmonium is unbalanced towards Ruin (as I suspect it to be), then the reaction with water would release small amounts of Ruinous Hydrogen, also known as Ruin's Mists.

Oh, the humanity!